Managing Organizational Behavior 2nd Edition by Timothy Baldwin,Bill Bommer,Robert Rubin

Exercise 8

Creating Urgency for a Change
You are in sales with a pharmaceutical firm and the major drug in your portfolio is one of three patented products that are widely prescribed by physicians (the other two are manufactured by two competitor firms). You are starting to see that the other firms are gaining an advantage with their aggressive and innovative promotion campaigns and marketing efforts. Sales of your product have not fallen off much yet, but you can see that the doctors you call on are starting to be more and more impressed with the competitor products, while interest in your drug is waning. Unfortunately, your superiors are complacent and do not recognize what is happening. Other salespeople have tried to make similar cases in the past but have often been dismissed as whiners (because their own sales were dropping) or as "Chicken Littles" who acted as if the sky was falling when it was only a passing phase that happens with all product cycles.
From your relatively low level in the firm, how might you build urgency for a change here? What might you do knowing you have little authority to get anyone to comply? What common traps should you avoid? Are there tactics that might seem intuitive or obvious but that might only raise resistance and create obstacles rather than urgency?